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The Psychic Hold of Slavery
Legacies in American Expressive Culture
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Edited by:
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With contributions by:
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2016
About this book
What would it mean to “get over slavery”? Is such a thing possible? Is it even desirable? Should we perceive the psychic hold of slavery as a set of mental manacles that hold us back from imagining a postracist America? Or could the psychic hold of slavery be understood as a tool, helping us get a grip on the systemic racial inequalities and restricted liberties that persist in the present day?
Featuring original essays from an array of established and emerging scholars in the interdisciplinary field of African American studies, The Psychic Hold of Slavery offers a nuanced dialogue upon these questions. With a painful awareness that our understanding of the past informs our understanding of the present—and vice versa—the contributors place slavery’s historical legacies in conversation with twenty-first-century manifestations of antiblack violence, dehumanization, and social death.
Through an exploration of film, drama, fiction, performance art, graphic novels, and philosophical discourse, this volume considers how artists grapple with questions of representation, as they ask whether slavery can ever be accurately depicted, trace the scars that slavery has left on a traumatized body politic, or debate how to best convey that black lives matter. The Psychic Hold of Slavery thus raises provocative questions about how we behold the historically distinct event of African diasporic enslavement and how we might hold off the transhistorical force of antiblack domination.
Author / Editor information
SOYICA DIGGS COLBERT is an associate professor of African American studies and theater and performance studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. She is the author of The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance and the Stage.
ROBERT J. PATTERSON is an associate professor of African American studies and English at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he also directs the African American Studies program. He is the author of Exodus Politics: Civil Rights and Leadership in African American Literature and Culture.
AIDA LEVY-HUSSEN is an assistant professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of the forthcoming book, How To Read African American Literature: Post–Civil Rights Fiction and the Task of Interpretation.
Reviews
"These intelligent and provocative essays wonderfully show us what a rich array of art forms (films, literature, television, and cartoons) have to say about what slavery has done and undone."
— Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, author of The End of American Lynching and A Guilted Age: Apologies for the Past"[The Psychic Hold of Slavery] is well written and well organized. The proficiency and writing style of the contributors serves to reassure readers that they are among knowledgeable experts in the field… This is a must read book for any African American Studies course."
— Horizons in Humanities and Social Sciences"Suggesting that even the violence against blacks that fueled the Black Lives Matter movement is on the slavery continuum, this volume argues that slavery continues to shape the US's fundamental psychology and its systemic racial hierarchy. A postracial US is yet to come ... Recommended"
— ChoiceTopics
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Frontmatter
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CONTENTS
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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Introduction: “Do You Want to Be Well?”
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1. 12 Years a What? Slavery, Representation, and Black Cultural Politics in 12 Years a Slave
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2. The Fruit of Abolition: Discontinuity and Difference in Terrance Hayes’s “The Avocado”
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3. Black Time: Slavery, Metaphysics, and the Logic of Wellness
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4. The Inside-Turned-Out Architecture of the Post-Neo-Slave Narrative
69 -
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5. Memwa se paswa: Sifting the Slave Past in Haiti
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6. Staging Social Death: Alienation and Embodiment in Aishah Rahman’s Unfi nished Women
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7. Dancing with Death: Spike Lee’s Bamboozled
125 -
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8. Laughing to Keep from Crying: Dave Chappelle’s Self-Exploration with “The Nigger Pixie”
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9. The Cartoonal Slave
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10. Trauma and the Historical Turn in Black Literary Discourse
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Conclusion: Black Lives Matter, Except When They Don’t: Why Slavery’s Psychic Hold Matters
212 -
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SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
221 -
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NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
233 -
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INDEX
237
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
October 21, 2019
eBook ISBN:
9780813583983
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9780813583983
Keywords for this book
The Psychic Hold of Slavery; Legacies in American Expressive Culture; SOYICA DIGGS COLBERT; ROBERT J. PATTERSON; AIDA LEVY-HUSSEN; slavery; abolition; psychology; American expressive culture; culture; literary critics; film critics; philosophers; cultural theorists; history; antiblack violence; dehumanization; social death; postracist America; systemic racial inequalities; restricted liberties; African American studies; slavery’s historical legacies; film; drama; fiction; performance art; graphic novels; philosophical discourse; black lives matter; African diasporic enslavement; antiblack domination; America; African American; Black American; Black American studies; African American culture; black culture; expressive culture; American literature; African American literature; cultural studies; women's studies; gender studies; social psychology; sociology; film studies; media studies; philosophy; representation; critical race theory; 21st century black popular culture; black pop culture; historical legacies; racism; systemic racism; post racist America; drama fiction; BLM; African diasporic; cultural media; slavery legacies; methodology; black freedom; post-racial; anti-black violence; black cultural politics; 12 Years a Slave; Spike Lee; Dave Chapelle; Uncle Tom's Cabin
Audience(s) for this book
For a non-specialist adult audience
